The first Spanish-speaking country in the world
Mexico is home to over 132 million people, making it the 11th most populous country in the world and the second most populous country in Latin America (behind Brazil). The population has almost doubled in 40 years: it was "only" 75 million in 1980, and 15 million a century ago, after the Mexican Revolution. To these figures should be added those of Mexicans living outside Mexico, particularly in the United States. In the United States, Mexamericanos, or Mexican-Americans, number over 36 million. They represent the largest foreign community and 63% of the country's 57 million Latinos!
Back to Mexico, where almost 80% of the population lives in urban areas. Half live in one of the 112 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and 37% in one of the 10 metropolises with more than one million inhabitants. The Zona Metropolitana del Valle de México (ZMVM), whose name replaces the former Distrito Federal, or D.F., is a megalopolis of over 21.8 million inhabitants, including Mexico City and its suburbs. It is the third most populous city on the continent, after São Paulo and New York. Behind this monster are Monterrey and Guadalajara, each with more than 5 million inhabitants.
The population density is 65 inhabitants/km2 (compared with 122 inhabitants/km2in France), but Mexico shows great disparity, with very densely populated areas such as Mexico City (6,000 inhabitants/km2) and others much less so, such as Baja California Sur (9 inhabitants/km2), Chihuahua, Durango or Campeche (14 inhabitants/km2).
Mexico has a relatively young population, but is not immune to the aging trend seen in all Western societies. The over-60s represent 12% of the population (around 25% in France), compared with 7% in 2000, and life expectancy is 75 years, with a significant difference between the sexes (almost 78 years for women and 72 years for men). The median age is now 29 (41 in France), down from 22 in 2000. The fertility rate in 2022 was 1.8 children per woman of childbearing age, compared with 2.8 in 2000, 4.8 in 1980 and around 7 in the 1960s. Of course, all these figures are averages, and there are huge differences between regions and between urban and rural areas, the latter having much larger families, particularly in indigenous communities.
A Métis Nation
Mexico's population is predominantly mestizo - around 80% according to most studies. This mixture of ethnic groups began when the Spanish conquistadors invaded the New World. One of the first mestizos was the son of Hernán Cortés and the native Malintzin, Marina or "La Malinche", one of the most controversial figures in Mexican history. Europeans mingled first with native women, then with African slaves. Little by little, the mestizo population became the majority, and these mestizos were placed by the Spanish Crown between the categories of "Creoles" (Spaniards born in America) and "Natives". This caste system was to be the breeding ground for independence aspirations. With the Republic, then the Revolution, Mexicans saw the need to establish a national identity by erasing ethnic differences. This national identity was to be forged through the ideology of linguistic and cultural miscegenation, which was at the heart of political discourse throughout the 20th century. While genetic mixing is a reality, the inequalities inherited from the colony are still glaringly apparent, and the situation has only worsened since the revolution... Aboriginals and Blacks are still at the bottom of the ladder, while the descendants of Europeans, who never mixed, proudly retain political and economic power. The leitmotiv "We are all mestizos" will also be an obstacle to the recognition of cultural diversity, and in particular of its indigenous and Afro-descendant minorities.
The African Heritage
Afromexicans are the descendants of the hundreds of thousands of African slaves brought to Mexico between 1590 and 1650 to replace the native workforce decimated by the diseases brought by the colonizers. Some of the slaves who escaped from the haciendas founded autonomous communities and rose up against the colonial authorities. Most of them mixed with natives or whites, and today many Mexicans have no idea that they have African blood in their veins. Afro-Mexicanos now number over 2.57 million. Yet for a very long time, they were ignored by the State and its institutions. It is only in 2020, for the first time, that INEGI will distinguish in its decennial census those people who consider themselves Afrodescendent. This is the fruit of years of mobilization by civil organizations such as México Negro and Alianza para el Fortalecimiento de las Regiones Indígenas y Comunidades Afroméxicanas (AFRICA), among others. Afromexicans are mainly to be found in the Costa Chica region, on the Pacific coast of the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, and to a lesser extent in Baja California Sur, Veracruz, Yucatán and Quintana Roo.
25 million Aboriginals
When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century, 25 million "Indians" (as the Europeans called them) of different ethnicities occupied the whole of what is now Mexico. The conquest decimated this population through war, forced labor and diseases to which the natives had no immunity. It's only today that we find the figure of 25 million natives, or at least people who identify themselves as belonging to one of the country's 68 indigenous peoples. They represent 21.5% of Mexico's total population. Indigenous peoples are present throughout the country, but are particularly concentrated in the states of Oaxaca (1.16 million) and Chiapas (1.4 million). Veracruz, Puebla and Yucatán also have sizeable indigenous minorities. The most numerous indigenous peoples are the Nahuas (24%), Mayas (13.7%), Mixtecs (6.8%), Zapotecs (6.8%) and Tzeltals (5.7%), who together account for more than half of Mexico's indigenous population.
68 indigenous languages
Tutunakú, ayyujk, bats'il k'op tseltal, otetzame, kickapoo, tének, wixárika, chatino, awakateko, chinanteco, ixil, bot'una...: these are just some of the country's languages! Mexico is a multilingual nation with no fewer than 68 indigenous languages, belonging to 11 language families, from which 364 dialects derive. This diversity makes it the second country in Latin America in terms of the number of native languages, behind Brazil, and the tenth in the world.
Mexico has no official language, although Spanish has de facto become one. Since the Law on the Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2003), all indigenous languages have the status of "national languages", on a par with Spanish, spoken by over 99% of Mexicans. The main indigenous languages are Nahuatl (1.72 million speakers, mostly from central Mexico); Mayan (859,000), in Chiapas and the Yucatán peninsula; Tzeltal (556,000) and Tzotzil (487,000), in Chiapas; and Mixtec (517,000) and Zapotec (479,000), in Oaxaca. In total, 7.4 million Mexicans speak an indigenous language, and most are bilingual (less than 1 million indigenous people do not speak Spanish). Some forty of these languages are endangered, and hundreds have already disappeared during colonization, but especially since independence. Indeed, from the 19th century onwards, the castellanización (Hispanization) of society, promoted by the republican state, aimed to eradicate indigenous languages as an obstacle to integration into national society. In Mexico, the main historical criterion for defining what is "indigenous" is language. For this reason, the consolidation of a homogeneous mestizo nation was to involve the prohibition of the use of indigenous languages, particularly in schools and the workplace. Attitudes gradually changed, and by the end of the 20th century, multiculturalism was recognized as a national asset. From the 1980s onwards, bilingual education was introduced in municipalities with a strong indigenous presence, but remained limited to the main language groups. The National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI) is responsible for developing cultural and linguistic programs and services, such as training indigenous translators and interpreters to facilitate community access to health, education and justice systems.
¿hablas Mexicano wey?
As for the Spanish spoken in Mexico, its vocabulary, expressions, accents and intonations are quite different from those of Cervantes. These differences can also be found, to a lesser extent, between the different regions of Mexico: given the size of the country and the ethnic and cultural differences between the states, there are many linguistic regionalisms. These regionalisms have been influenced by the local languages and dialects of the original peoples. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, has greatly influenced Mexican Spanish, even in areas where it was not spoken (north and south). The Spanish (and universal) lexical field was enriched with Nahuatl words for fruits(tomato, jitomate, zapote, aguacate, cacahuate, chayote, etc.), plants(achiote, quelite, jocote, etc.), or beverages and foods(guacamole, mezcal, vainilla, cacao, chocolate, etc.) which did not exist in Spanish. The Mayan language had an influence on the Spanish spoken in southeastern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, as well as in Central America.
Beyond the indigenous languages, under the North American influence, many English words have become part of everyday language. In Mexico, los carros se rentan (" cars are rented ") while in Spain, los coches se alquilan... Finally, the Mexican language is far from being fixed, it evolves with humorous slang words invented every day. There are also a lot of puns and double meaning expressions, the famous albur, with which Mexicans like to amuse themselves, and it's even funnier with tourists!
